Captain Smith, a few years ago, in giving his biennial report of the Kansas prison, said: “The discipline has been carefully looked after and as a general thing prisoners yield to a strict discipline better than most people think. They seem to see and realize the necessity of rules and very seldom complain, if they violate them, at the punishment that is sure to follow. Our punishments are of such a character that they do not degrade. Kansas, when she established her penitentiary, prohibited corporal punishment. She is one of the few states that by law prohibits the use of the whip and strap, taking the position that it is better to use kindness than to resort to brutal measures. I have often been told, and that too by old prison men, that it is impossible to run a prison and have first-class discipline without the whip. Such is not my experience. We have had within our walls perhaps as desperate men as ever received a sentence. We have controlled them and have maintained a good discipline second to none in the country. How did we accomplish this? Our answer is, By being kind but firm, treating a man, although a prisoner, as a man, and if he violates rules, lock him up and give him an opportunity to commune with himself and his Maker; also give him to understand that he is the executioner of his own sentence, and when he concludes that he can do right, release him. It matters not how vicious, how stubborn, or what kind of a temper he may have, when left with no one to talk to and an opportunity to cool down and with the knowledge that when he comes to the conclusion that he will do better he can be released, he leaves the cell feeling very different from the prisoner who leaves the whipping-post after having received any number of lashes that the brutal officer may desire to inflict. One goes to his work cheerful and determined to behave himself; the other dogged, revengeful, and completely humiliated, only lives in hope that he may at some time take his revenge upon the person that ordered or inflicted the punishment and upon the state or country that would by its laws tolerate such a brutal or slavish practice.” CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.